In my latest review, I’ve mentioned that the GeForce GTX 1060 is probably the best GPU for mining because of its great price/performance and performance/power consumption ratios.

Well, today I am about to present to you something even better. Meet the P104-100 (MINING-P104-4GB). I’ve finally managed to get my hands on some of those and man, this thing is impressive. Let’s start with the basic specs and then move on the mining benchmarks. As usual, I’ve tested it with different algos as well as clocks.

Power Consumption and Cooling

The ASUS P104-100 cooling system is similar to the GTX 1070 Strix one. If you open it you can see the same fan design with bushing bearings. You would expect a mining GPU to have ball bearings instead since those are way more durable however ASUS opted for the cheapest design.

The warranty of the card is 3 months, which is not enough time for bushings to wear off. I don’t like the way ASUS made cheap fans and provided the card with a short warranty period to avoid complaints. While this does not necessarily mean that the fans will die in 4 months, I am quite sure they will become noisy quite soon. I recommend you getting an ASUS P104-100 only if you have a dedicated noise-isolated room/office.

Another con I’ve noticed is that the memory chips are not in direct contact with the coolers. This decreases the overclock potential of the GPU, which is quite disappointing since the memory chips are especially designed for mining and have very flexible clocks.

Power-consumption wise, the card is quite good and it pulls around 150W from the wall even after being overclocked.

The card offers a lot of room for undervolting. Usually, you undervolt to decrease power consumption. In the case of this card though, you got to undervolt to prevent it from overheating. Dragging the power limit down to 70% is a good start.

Hashrate and Profitability

So far, I’ve only mentioned the cons of the card at the point you are probably wondering why the hell I am so excited about it. While I do wish I had a Gigabyte P104 instead, I am okay with the ones I’ve got because of the hashrate.

The card is great for Ethereum – the manufacturer didn’t lie that they’ve optimized the memory for mining that coin. It can also mine zCash and Nexus with the same efficiency as a GTX 1070. Ethereum-wise, I’ve managed to push it up to 41 MH/s, which is about 20% more than a GTX-1080 Ti can do and about 30% more than a GTX-1070 (31 MH/s).

Buy P104-100 Mining Video Cards

For me, the main challenge with this card was to squeeze the most hashrate from it without making it boil. If you are overclocking an ASUS P104-100 you want to keep a constant eye on the temperatures.

Anyway, do I recommend you buying a set of those cards? Definitely, yes. The demand on those cards is high for a reason. While the ASUS version of the P104-100 could indeed use some improvement, I am still pretty happy with it and will buy more as soon as I have the chance to. I am also getting some Gigabyte mining cards soon, so stay tuned!

Mining Performance

Power Consumption

Cooling

Price

4.5

Summary

Pros:

Great Ethereum hashrate

Low power draw and unmatched Megahash/Watt ratio

Can actually be used for gaming too since it features display ports and can perform about 4% better than a GTX 1070.

Cons:

Availability. I’ve ordered 30 of those but ended up receiving only 6 after a long wait

Gaming card fan design – could use better bearings since it is meant to work 24/7 under full load

Cooling system – memory chips need better cooling

Thank you for reading. As always, your comments, suggestions and questions are welcome.